Whatever the form of your business, having a great website is a must. If E-Commerce is your field, your survival depends on it.If finding what your company offers and where to find you in the physical world is what people are heading to your site for, is your design optimised to make this as easy as possible? Here is a breakdown of 7 telltale signs it’s time for a website redesign.

1. It isn't mobile friendly

There’s no way around it; your site MUST be mobile friendly. For a couple of years now, the majority of searches have been performed on mobile devices. So, if your site doesn’t read well on them, people will bounce and head elsewhere.

Poor user interface design (UI) could be driving away potential leads and with it their custom. Your website should be there to help your bottom line - not harm it.

A site being mobile friendly is incorporated into Google’s SEO ranking algorithms too, so to ignore this is to penalise your SERP ranking. To also have poor UI at the same time is website suicide.

2. It looks bad

Whilst we are thinking about UI, if your site doesn’t look the best, people will head elsewhere. They are superficial like that.

That’s a bit harsh. It actually makes logical sense;

If there are two businesses offering to exchange their service for your hard earned money, will you speak to the one who has an attractive, slick and professional website? Or will you speak to the one which is overly complicated, cliched and stale or even just downright ugly? Remember - 90% of information is visual, so appreance is important!

Your website is an indication of the level of service on offer. Don’t let it let you down.

3. It... Takes... Ages... To... Load.

You could have the best website in the history of the internet, but it takes too long to load so is only 60% effective 100% of the time.

Reduce your image sizes. Simplify the layout. Turn off anything on autoplay (it’s 2016). Streamline content. Do anything to make that page load faster and make sure people see what you have to offer.

You don’t know how to do that? Oh, okay, let’s look at that…

4. Your team can maintain it

If you have a CMS (Content Management System) which is too complicated for your team to use to quickly tweak your site, then it’s time for an overhaul.

You should be able to keep the news content updated easily without messing up any coding or layout features.

Sure, pay the experts to design and build it - and maintain the important things related to that - but your team should be able to put important news info on there, such as add that latest job to the ‘Projects’ page, etc.

If you don’t have any form of CMS system, speak to your web design agency about Hubspot and any other possible options.

5. It Doesn’t Match Your Brand’s Values Anymore

Maybe your website has been neglected for so long that, whilst you have been busy growing your brand to the next level and beyond, it doesn’t even look like it should be your website anymore.

It could be something as simple as inconsistencies in logos, brand colours or something more dangerous like the demographic it is targeting.

As an example, I recently saw the website of a commercial plumbing subcontractor with 50 staff, whose turnover was a couple of million a year. Their website was ten years old from back when they were a company of 4 domestic plumbers serving their local community.

Imagine if they had had a website targeting the right customers all that time. Talk about missed opportunities.

6. Your SEO is suffering

Only 6% of users explore beyond the first page of Google’s results page. Perform an analytics exercise on your site and check that your URLs, page titles, meta pages and keywords are optimised.

You can then start looking at climbing up the SERPs and improving traffic.

7. And Finally, If It’s Clearly Inferior To Your Competitor’s It’s Time To Change It

This doesn’t just relate to it looking bad, as outlined in point 2. It also relates to UI.

It’s also linked to User Experience Design on the back-end. Is it designed well in terms of navigation, presentation of information, layout?

How do all of these things compare to your competitor sites?

Try asking your team to look at your 3 nearest competitors’ sites and note what’s good and bad. Collate your results then see what you can implement to improve your site and do it better than they do.